


Sharing Space

by MadameReveuse



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Hand Jobs, M/M, basically porn without plot, pavuvu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 21:01:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3784207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameReveuse/pseuds/MadameReveuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snafu seems to have a problem with Sledge sharing his tent. Sledge is just confused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sharing Space

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, this is based solely on the portrayal of these guys in the TV show. I mean no disrespect to the real veterans.

Base camp on Pavuvu was crowded, humid and hot. There were men everywhere at every time of day; one was never alone. Sledge had almost forgotten what privacy even was. Right now he sat outside his tent brushing his teeth. He could have just as well done that inside – should have, probably, if he kept out in the sun without covering his head like this, the sun would roast his brain into a shriveled marshmallow – but inside was stuffy and obnoxious and Snafu was in there adding to it.

_God_ , Snafu. Now that there was no immediate danger of being shot or exploded, dealing with Snafu had climbed up pretty high on the list of Sledge’s problems. After Peleliu, they had somehow become tent-mates, and (so it seemed to Sledge) developed some sort of…understanding. He wouldn’t call them buddies, but…they had an understanding. Still, Snafu wasn’t exactly an easy person to spend a lot of time in close proximity with.

The problem wasn’t his constant prattling, or that he was a noisy sleeper, tossing and muttering nonsense. Sometimes he rolled off the cot, fell right back asleep and spent the rest of the night on the ground because apparently he couldn’t care less. But everyone had bad nights. Especially here. The problem wasn’t even so much that the air in the tent was constantly foggy with his never-ending smoke (although that _was_ a bit annoying). Sledge could even cope with the unabashed jacking off as soon as Snafu _believed_ he was asleep (at least he was courteous enough to wait…).The problem were the odd, borderline creepy occurrences that had started to…well, occur, that left Sledge fearing he was sharing his tent with an actual sociopath.

There had been that one night when he had startled awake from an uneasy, nightmare-infested sleep to find someone crouching over him brandishing a large knife. In the confusion of half-sleep, he had taken the shady figure for a Jap and had hauled himself up, headbutting the man, who fell down and exclaimed: “Fuck, Sledgehamma!”

Only then he had realized that this was indeed Snafu.

“What the hell d’you punch me for?” Snafu had asked from where he was rising from the ground, genuine confusion in his voice.

“What the hell are _you_ doing waving an enormous knife at me in the middle of the night?” Sledge had pointedly asked back. “Wanna get rid of me? I snore too loudly or something?”

“No” Snafu had muttered and shuffled back to his bunk without a further word. Needless to say, Sledge hadn’t caught any further sleep that night.

* * *

 

The night after that, he was woken up again. This time, comparatively harmlessly, by a whispered “Sledgehamma?”

Maybe if he pretended he was asleep…

“Heeeey, Sledgehamma.”

He made a tiny, uncooperative noise in his throat.

_Thump._

Something hit him square in the chest. He picked the object up and, even in the dark, could determine that Snafu had tossed a boot at him. What a _nice_ way to wake someone.

“What the hell, Snafu” he said.

“You awake, Sledge?”

“Am now.”

There was a brief silence. Then: “Ya know, last night, with the knife…”

“Yeah?”

“Wasn’ tryin’ to hurt you.”

“Yeah?”

“Came across wrong, I guess. ‘M sorry.”

Sledge sighed. “So what was it you were trying to do?”

Snafu muttered something.

“Oh, come on, _what?_ ”

“I took a strand of your hair.”

“You…you did what.”

“I took some o’ your hair an’ kept it. Wanna have something to remember you by. You know, just in case.”

_Just in case?_ Sledge inadvertently shuddered a bit. “Well…” he said. “I hope you put it somewhere safe.”

Silence from Snafu.

“Like next to your Jap teeth collection.”

More silence.

“Or the shrunk heads you probably store under your cot.”

“Ain’t got no shrunk heads.”

“Voodoo totems, maybe?”

“Now you’re jus’ bein’ a dick.”

“Me – _I’m_ being a dick? _I’m_ not the one who…” Sledge paused, angry, frustrated. This wasn’t worth his time. “Don’t wake me up again unless the Japs are invadin’” he said abruptly and rolled over. Had he been able to see the look on Snafu’s face in the semi-darkness, he would have probably felt a pang of guilt.

* * *

 

Sometimes Sledge wondered if Snafu hated him or something.

This morning, he had noticed his shirt had disappeared. It had turned up again later, but changed, somehow, feeling different. It was almost as if it had shrunk in the laundry, but that was impossible. He hadn’t _done_ laundry. Only when he had seen Snafu wearing a shirt that was a bit too big for him, and had the same dried stain on the left elbow as Eugene’s, things had made a little more sense.

“Hey” he had said. “Looks like we switched shirts. You’ve got mine.”

“Yeah?” Snafu had said and looked at him strangely, tip of his tongue coming out to lick his lips. Something in that gesture had made Eugene shiver. Then Snafu had walked out on him without a further word. He’d been wearing Eugene’s shirt since.

Furthermore, he was pretty sure Snafu was watching him sleep. That suspicion got cemented by those borderline creepy comments Snafu dropped on him some mornings (“Nightmares, Sledge? Sure been tossin’ a lot last night” or, even worse, “Dreamed of a lady friend, huh?” accompanied by a pointed look at his crotch). One night he could have sworn he’d woken up to Snafu rifling through his things, specifically his pocket bible, reading the notes he’d made, even though Snafu denied it later and claimed Eugene had dreamt it all.

When he thought back on it, Snafu had been like this pretty much since Peleliu. Before Peleliu, before the airfield to be precise, he had simply been…mean. He had seen Sledge as this dumb little rookie who probably wouldn’t make it past his first firefight. After the airfield, after he had somehow become Sledgehammer, the dynamics had shifted. Snafu had still been weird, but a different _kind_ of weird. Sometimes he could be almost cordial, almost as if they were friends. Sometimes it looked like those crazy…things he did occasionally were actually strange, clumsy attempts at making nice. Sledge specifically thought back on the day when Snafu had called over: “Hey, Sledgehamma, got you a little something!” and tossed _a severed finger_ into his lap, causing him to almost upchuck his meager breakfast.

“Wow, that’s very funny, Snaf!” he had shouted and flung the thing away from him. If this had been meant to be a joke at Sledge’s expense, Snafu had failed, everyone else being way too grossed out to laugh. Later, though, Eugene almost regretted having flung away the gold ring that Jap had been wearing with his finger. It had been a _nice_ ring. Mostly, though, Snafu's practical jokes were just plain old reckless. Like that time he'd tried to juggle mortars. Or the time Sledge had to stop him from putting a grenade into his mouth because some moron bet him he couldn't bite off the pin. Sometimes it seemed like the man had a death wish, or wasn't actually aware what danger was. Or maybe he was totally off his rocker, like many believed.

Sometimes Snafu avoided Sledge for days on end, sometimes he sought closeness that got uncomfortable. Eugene had found out that Snafu spent most of his time in base camp hanging around the few foolish marines that were still stupid enough to play poker against him. Since nobody had any valuables, they gambled for cigarettes; apparently this was the cause for Snafu’s neverending stock.

As the days passed, Sledge came to believe that Snafu just liked to prank him for some reason. That or he simply was the worst person to share a space with ever. He perpetually left his things lying around Eugene’s half of the tent…which would be bearable if Eugene didn’t trip over them almost every night. Especially nasty occurrences had been when he had sat down into an inexplicable cup of juice that Eugene never figured where it had even come from and what it was doing on his bed or, even worse, when he had stepped barefoot on some of Snafu’s gruesome little trophies (teeth). Snafu had also stolen his blanket and swapped it for his own, significantly rattier one. It had holes burned in it and smelled of cold smoke and, well, Snafu, but Eugene did not complain. The last thing he wanted was another nocturnal knife attack. There was also the time he had woken up one morning with a completely random flower crown on his head, but he could make exactly zero sense of that, so he largely ignored it.

He would have been able to forgive and forget most of those, had Snafu not been impervious to being called out on his shortcomings. Whenever Sledge tried to talk those things out with him, Snafu cast him this almost disappointed look, uttered some noncommittal grunts and disappeared. It was like he was trying to convey a sense of _How dare you not constantly put up with my shit without complaint?_ It was like he was trying to rile Sledge up on purpose. Hell, he probably just hated him and wanted him out of the tent. Which made him feel more miserable than he liked to admit to himself. Snafu was, that much had been established, a pain to live with, but…still. After Peleliu, after all they’d gone through, after saving each other’s asses about a dozen times over, Sledge had thought they could at least get along. But it didn’t bear thinking about, and things had to be settled. So Sledge decided to come clear.

“Snafu…listen.”

Snafu had been sitting idly on his cot, cleaning out his fingernails with that enormous knife he had. Now he looked up and made a noise to impart that he was listening.

“You know, these past few weeks I noticed…I mean…I know you don’t like when I mention this, but…” Eugene broke off. He was met with that vacant stare Snafu sometimes had, and decided _screw the diplomatic approach._ “Listen, I guess you just hate having me in your space and that’s…that’s alright. I’ll be looking out for another guy to share a tent with.”

Snafu didn’t answer immediately, just blinked slowly, like he needed time to process what Eugene had just said. Then his eyes widened slowly.

“You could have just said something, though” Eugene plowed on. “I wouldn’t have died of sadness, you know. I guess we just make unlikely friends. No need to go behind my back about it.”

“No.” Snafu stood up. “Sledge…Gene…no. It’s not that…I don’t…fuck, I don’t hate your ass, Sledge. Don’t you even _think_ about leavin’.”

With his eyes all wide like that, he looked younger, almost boyish, like a kid who’d been caught doing something bad. Almost cute. The effect was only spoiled a little by the fact that he still had that fuck-all giant knife in his hand.

“Um…that’s…I…” Eugene spluttered, eyes on the swerving knife. “You say you don’t hate me, so how come you act like it?”

Snafu looked at him like he’d gone Asiatic. “I don’t” he claimed. “I…fuck.”He turned on his heels and left the tent without any form of explanation, leaving a baffled Sledge.

He came back only late that night, and drunk. Eugene was feigning sleep as he tried to talk to him, would have had to strain his ears to understand him anyway, because adding alcohol to Snafu’s thick ‘Nawlins drawl made him nearly unintelligible. To be perfectly honest, Eugene almost preferred him that way.

* * *

 

Revelation happened some time later. Sledge was ambling along from the outskirts of base camp, where he had just heeded a call of nature, back to the tent. He lifted the flap of fabric over the entrance carefully, wanting to snoop out whether Snafu was in there before he went in himself. Ever since that strange row they’d had, he had taken care to avoid Snafu, not so much out of spite, but because he was confused as always and didn’t know how to handle things.

The sight he was met with in the tent was another thing he couldn’t handle.

Now Sledge had spent so many sleepless nights in annoyed frustration, listening to Snafu getting his rocks off in the other bunk, back firmly turned so he didn’t have to see, blanket over his head to at least muffle the sounds a little. Never had he ever rolled over to watch. He could have. Wasn’t sure to this day why each and every of these nights had come with the hyperawareness that he could have. But he hadn’t.

Now he saw. Saw Snafu shirtless, pants down to his ankles, working himself in a feverish pace, his cock so painfully hard that Sledge’s eyes watered a little in a kind of sympathy, because he could _feel_ the aching need radiating off the other man. His other hand over his mouth muffled a bit the noises he made (Sledge had no words to describe these noises, _moaning_ would be wildly insufficient), his hips going through some aborted, jerky canting motions as he whimpered, begged to no one for relief. Sledge should have probably left now, should have turned around and found somewhere else to be for the next few minutes, but for some reason he stayed right there, in the entrance of the tent, frozen and absorbing the sight before him, some remote part of his mind wondering when Snafu had been promoted from “that creepy guy” to “ugh so enticing”. And then…

“Fuck, Eugene.”

Eugene startled, presuming he’d been seen, guilt and shame ready to wash over him. But wait, Snafu’s eyes were still slammed shut. Little droplets of water pooling in the corners. He still continued. No, this couldn’t be…

“ _Eugeeeeene_ ” Snafu whined again, more urgently, followed by a stream of panted gibberish. “God, I…wish I could…fuck, Gene, so…perfect, ugh, if you were here wi’ me…fuck, I would…”

“You would do what?” Eugene asked loudly. “I’m right here.”

Snafu snapped his head up at the sound of his voice, eyes opening. For a moment, he stilled, just stared at Sledge like a deer in the headlights. Anyone else would have stammered apologies now, done anything to defuse the situation, but this was, after all, Snafu. He continued working his dick, slower this time, having been put off track a little by Eugene’s sudden entrance, long hard strokes. His eyes glazing over with want.

“Wanna fuck ya, Sledgehamma” he panted. “There…there ya have it…”

“Yeah?” Sledge walked up closer, on legs that felt only _slightly_ like rubber.

“Yeah” Snafu breathed, tipping his head back, eyes drooping closed now, his face contorted in pleasure-pain. He was at an impasse, struggling between his pressing need for relief and the situation at hand. He needed desperately to get off, but he couldn’t now. He squeezed his eyes more tightly shut, in an effort to perhaps shut out either Sledge, or at least the few shreds of his modesty that had endured through the war and told him that he couldn’t jack off _to_ Sledge _in front of_ Sledge. He full-body twitched when Eugene put his hands on him.

“Lemme help you out” he whispered.

Snafu’s breathing went erratic, closer and closer to hyperventilating as Sledge skimmed his hands down his abdomen, past his too-bony hips, circling his crotch, teasing. “Lemme help you” he repeated. He was going by what his instincts told him, never having even remotely _done_ something like this before. He sat on the cot straddling Snafu’s legs, once again drinking in the sight of that glorious mess of a man beneath him.

Snafu had gone back to rambling. “Gene…dammit, Gene, I gotta…meant to fuck ya since…forever… meant to slam my dick up that perfect lil’ tight ass you got…” His words dissolved into a mindless moan as he twisted and squirmed like crazy under Sledge’s hesitant touch.

“Ain’t got time for that” Sledge observed, smiling. Snafu’s hand was still curled around his cock and pumping lamely; it looked like he was suffering from too much sensory overload to manage much more. His hand was as fever-warm as his cock as Eugene eased it off and applied his own, setting the fast pace Snafu needed. He knew empathically that if he kept this up for just a few minutes, Snafu would come and his ordeal would be over. But there was also the problem of his own erection starting to strain against his pants, so he got them off and slotted their erections next to each other so that he could cup them both in one hand. He started rutting them against each other, which elicited high-pitched, urgent noises from Snafu, who, as Eugene had predicted, came in a sudden burst after a few minutes of that. He rolled off him but kept looking at him, fueled by the sight of Snafu all worked up as he finished the job for himself.Snafu watched him right back through the haze of his afterglow, and eventually extended a sluggish hand.

“Gotta return the favor to ya” he slurred, even though it didn’t look like he had the willpower to move any of his limbs right now.

“This…is fine” Eugene ground out through gritted teeth as he worked himself over, taking up pace. Snafu couldn’t stop his hand from wandering, though, so it crawled all over Eugene’s body, mapping, exploring, adding to his arousal. When Eugene felt his whole body coil with his orgasm, Snafu’s hand was a tangible weight on his shoulder, grounding him, saving him from flying off into space as he erupted. Afterwards, he just collapsed against the frame of the bunk, boneless with bliss and catching his wind. Somewhere in his periphery he heard Snafu say: “Gene…”

“Yeah?”

“Ya know this was…” he paused. “We can make like this didn’ happen, if you want.”

Sledge knit his brows. “Why?”

Snafu made a frustrated noise. “Look here, boo, I’m not good with...fuck.” He turned from facing Sledge to lying on his back staring upward, as if there were cues written on the tarpaulin above their heads. He sighed. “I didn’ mean for you to…get ideas.”

_What?_ Eugene strained his head to catch a glimpse into Snafu’s eyes. He found them filled with a kind of fear he had never seen on Snafu during battle. Puzzle pieces in his head clicked into place and Sledge almost laughed out loud as he realized this bastard sonofabitch with his devil-may-care attitude was afraid of his rejection. As if to prove him right and make it even more helplessly adorable, Snafu avoided his eyes by burrowing his face in the crook of his arm where he lay, an almost childish notion. If I don’t see you, you don’t see me.

“No, Snaf” he said softly, his hand coming up to brush over that mop of dark, tangled curls. “This was amazing. We can do it again sometime if you’d like. If I had had any clue you wanted to…you wanted this and not to bloody kill me…”

Snafu snapped his head up, an almost indignant look on his face. “Where’d you get that bright idea? Leave the fucking killing to the Japs.”

“Well I thought you did at least want to creep me out of the tent. I mean, what was with stealing my clothes? And my blanket? And that strand of hair?”

Snafu shrugged. “Your stuff smells like you.”

Sledge shook his head and chuckled. Just a few hours ago this statement would have made him so uncomfortable. But now…now he considered the flowers, the random gifts, the way Snafu had tried to unobtrusively look out for him or even woo him…

“And there I thought you couldn’t stand me.”

Snafu blinked slowly and shook his head. “Naah. An’ you wanna know what else…?”

“What?”

“Just the thought of you runnin’ around in my shirt…?” Snafu purred, suddenly very close to his ear. “Dammit if that doesn’ make me hard all over.”

Sledge huffed good-naturedly and climbed back up on the cot.

“Need me to take care of that?”

* * *

 

Later, in the line for evening chow, Burgin would, only a bit awkwardly, explain to him that he and a few other marines might have tried to give Snafu some pointers “because the kid’s smitten with you, whole bloody K company could see”. The results had been mostly disastrous, chief among them the severed finger, courtesy of a thoughtless remark from Burgin that people liked “having gifts, but not teeth, romantic stuff. Flowers. Jewelry” “But I take it you two settled things” he’d say.

“How do you know?” Eugene asked.

“You walk a little funny” Burgin said and went away, muttering on how someone owed him ten packs of cigarettes now.


End file.
